Search Results for: tale covers

A Strange Song of Unknown Places: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft

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HPL’s original manuscript Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes…

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New Treasures: Skallagrim – In the Vales of Pagarna by Stephen R. Babb

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Experience Skallagrim – In the Vales of Pagarna by Stephen R. Babb in all its forms. This post covers everything to get you hooked, from a summary, review, excerpts, and links to the complementing albums from Glass Hammer. Reading Skallagrim feels like you are a witness to the live version of Frazetta’s “Against the Gods” painting! You actually witness a hero grab a sword from the sky. The opening scene poses a set of mysteries as the titular protagonist is…

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Thomas M. Disch: Love and Nonexistence

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334 by Thomas M. Disch (Avon, October 1974). Cover artist unknown In the last page of Thomas M. Disch’s novel 334, the family matriarch, Mrs. Hansen, has finished explaining why she should have the right to die. “I’ve made sense, haven’t I? I’ve been rational?” she asks her unseen auditor, a civil servant taking an application. “They’re all good reasons, every one of them. I checked them in your little book.” She has indeed given reasons why her life is…

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Haunted Trains and the Rock-and-Roll Afterlife: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X (DAW, August 1982). Cover by Michael Whelan The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X was the tenth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyrighted and printed in 1982. A whole decade for this anthology thus far! This was the third volume edited by horror author and editor Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). Michael Whelan’s (1950–) artwork appears for an eighth time in a row on the cover. This is one of his eeriest…

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Goth Chick News: Cosplayers, an Author Exclusive, and a Zombie Tramp, or Our Trip to C2E2 2022

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Two weekends ago, Chicago’s largest convention space, McCormick Center, played host to over 100K attendees to the 12th annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2 for you cool kids), and I am once again reminded why Chicago ranks in the top cities for people-watching. Amidst the oodles of MCU, Star Wars, and anime merchandise, aisles of comic illustrators (many of whom appeared to have a near cult-like following) and celebrity autograph queues, mingled individuals who seemed to have ample expendable…

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Blob Monsters, Killer Alien Plants, and Feral Automobiles: July/August 2022 Print SF Magazines

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July/August 2022 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Donato Giancola, Eldar Zakirov, and Alan M. Clark It’s marvelous to see a cover by the great Donato Giancola on Analog, of all places. Donato did one cover for Black Gate, our famous Red Sonja cover for Black Gate 15, our special Warrior Women issue. Analog‘s last cover was by NASA, the inside of a satellite or…

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Carving Out Destiny: Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

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There came a time when the destiny of Men and Gods was hammered out upon the forge of Fate, when monstrous wars were brewed and mighty deeds were designed. And there rose up in this time, which was called the Age of the Young Kingdoms, heroes. Greatest of these heroes was a doom-driven adventurer who bore a crooning runeblade that he loathed. His name was Elric of Melniboné… from the Prologue to Stormbringer ⇐ That cover, more than any other,…

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New Treasures: World Breakers edited by Tony Daniel and Christopher Ruocchio

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World Breakers (Baen mass market reprint, July 26, 2022). Cover by Dominic Harman If you’re one of the (very few) folks who pay attention when I complain, you know that I frequently lament the decline of the mass market science fiction anthology. Book store shelves used to be full of ’em, and nowadays they’ve all but vanished. Folks don’t have an appetite for short fiction these days, at least not in the way they used to. And that’s a shame…

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Vintage Treasures: The New Hugo Winners edited by Isaac Asimov

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The New Hugo Winners, Volume I & II and The Super Hugos (Baen, 1991, 1992, and 1992). Covers by Vincent Di Fate, Bob Eggleton, and Frank Kelly Freas Last month, as part of my master plan to examine every interesting science fiction paperback ever printed, I surveyed five of the finest SF anthologies of all time: the first Hugo Winners volumes, all edited by Isaac Asimov and published by Doubleday between 1962 and 1986. Although the first two volumes, collected…

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Uncanny Futures

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I have always loved stories that offer a glimpse of the future. Speculative fiction is a literature of ideas, and stories set in the future can explore an enormous range of possibilities — from dark chilling futures that serve as cautionary tales to bright futures that offer us much-needed glimmers of hope. We here at Uncanny Magazine are in the middle of the Uncanny Magazine, Year 9: To Fifty… and Beyond! The upcoming year will bring our 50th issue, and while…

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